Pain, it has been said, is the great censor, the eater of words. Pain shatters language; it remains untranslatable-not just anti-narrative but pre-narrative, calling us back to our first sounds.
Garth Greenwell, the author of two previous works of fiction... has been lauded for his depiction of sex-our 'densest form of communication,' he calls it.
Typically, however, writers do not sit long with their pain; they busy themselves with the history, the social meanings of sickness. Pain, on its own, seems to have no plot...it 'has an Element of Blank.'
Perhaps it is a great anatomist of pleasure who can fill in some of the blanks in the story of pain.
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